Saturday, 7 June 2014

Favourite albums: CALENTURE (1987) by The Triffids

I love David McComb. This love goes way beyond mere
respect or affection. The man has dragged me out of hard times on more
occasions than I would care to admit. Seriously. Whatever it is, “The Seabirds”
will do you good.

Calenture
over Born Sandy Devotional was of
course one hell of a tough choice, but I guess there comes a time when you
start preferring “Across The Universe” to “Let It Be”. It is not necessarily
‘right’, but Born Sandy Devotional is
so deeply engraved in my psyche that I barely even need to listen to it again.
It’s a stone-cold classic. It’s in my all-time top 10.

This album, however, is not so much theiressential
Australian statement, as a collection of some of David McComb’s best songs. From
the delicate opening guitar line of “Bury Me Deep In Love” to the glorious
orchestral ending of “Save What You Can”, it’s a songwriting triumph very few
could match.

And it is quite incredible to think that at some early
stage of their existence The Triffids were doing effortless pop gems like
“Stand Up” and “Farmers Never Visit Nightclubs”. Nothing suggested the dark
Cave-esque edges of “Hanging Shed” or the desperate and suicidal vibes of
“Tarrilup Bridge”, but that’s where we ended up a few years later. The
Triffids’ great big style that combined roughness and romance in equal measure.
If anything, that early melodicism ensured the appeal of whatever amphetamine-heroin-alcohol
darkness David McComb would get himself into.

Calenture
(fever of tropical climates) is tough rock music for emotionally vulnerable
people. It’s full of love songs that showcase the wide range of McComb’s
songwriting talent. It’s instantly memorable pop music (“Open For You”), it’s
powerful sweeping ballads (“Blinder By The Hour”), it’s ‘dark’ and ‘difficult’
(“Unmade Love”), it’s romantic idealism (“Trick Of The Light”), it’s tough folk
motifs (“Jerdacuttup Man”, possibly their greatest achievement), it’s anthemic
elegance (“Save What You Can”). That was a band at their absolute peak,
operating between subtlety and intensity. There’s just one threatening moment
on the album, and it comes ‘courtesy’ of the first five seconds of “Holy Water”.
What’s with that U2-styled groove?..

…But then David’s voice comes through and you know you
will be fine again. The voice is deep and comforting, and it shouldn’t have
ended the way it did. Though you can’t deny the fine lyric in the chorus of
“Save What You Can”. ‘If you can leave’, it says in a painfully exultant way,
‘then leave it all’.